Illinois Nuclear Plant Gets New Friend: Meta Signs Long-Term PPA for 1.1-GW Clinton Reactor

    June 3, 2025
    Constellation and Meta announced today they have signed a 20-year PPA to pay for output from the Clinton nuclear power plant in Illinois. Once potentially considered for retirement due to economic competitiveness of nuclear power generation, the now titled Clinton Clean Energy Center is financially supported for its 1.12 GW of carbon-free output through the 2040s.
    Image of Clinton Nuclear Station credit By Daniel Schwen - Own work. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
    683f69119d5c7a8b2abcc307 Clinton Power Station Pano

    The data center thirst for more energy to fuel artificial intelligence and hyperscale growth once again is turning to nuclear energy.

    Many tech firms are cutting deals around small modular reactor technologies that have not been built yet, but Facebook parent Meta has followed Microsoft in signing a long-term power purchase agreement around conventional and currently operational nuclear power.

    Constellation and Meta announced today they have signed a 20-year PPA to pay for output from the Clinton nuclear power plant in Illinois. Once potentially considered for retirement due to economic competitiveness of nuclear power generation, the now titled Clinton Clean Energy Center is financially supported for its 1.12 GW of carbon-free output through the 2040s.

    The Meta deal also helps Constellation on funding relicensing and continuing operations at Clinton for another 20 years. The PPA takes effect June 2027.

    Last year, Microsoft signed a long-term PPA with Constellation (formerly Exelon Generation) to pay for relicensing and reopening the Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania by 2028. Three Mile Island is being renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center in honor of former Exelon CEO Christopher Crane, a longtime nuclear energy advocate who died earlier this decade.

    At one point, as electricity demand flattened and more renewables and natural gas power came online, the nation’s utilities planned to close dozens of GW in expensive nuclear power. Now, the rise of AI and cloud-based capacity demand is forcing the power grid planners to reconsider those decisions and re-locate the perceived intersection of power resiliency and sustainability.

    “Last year, Constellation’s announced plan to restart the Crane Clean Energy Center became national news, but despite all of the interest and overwhelming support, a key question was missed: why did we let such a valuable plant close in the first place? We all know that the closure cost our community jobs, tax revenue, more pollution and higher prices,” said Joe Dominguez, president and CEO, Constellation, in a statement. “We are proud to partner with Meta because they asked that important question, and even better, they figured out that supporting the relicensing and expansion of existing plants is just as impactful as finding new sources of energy. Sometimes the most important part of our journey forward is to stop taking steps backwards.”

    The Clinton generating station’s one unit was brought online in 1987 and only a decade ago was slated for retirement in 2017 due to financial losses. This lack of competitiveness had nothing to do with performance: The facility’s General Electric Gen II boiling water reactor was rated at more than 1 GW in generation capacity and had a capacity factor of nearly 90%, meaning it ran at or near full capacity for that ratio over time. The capacity factor for most combined-cycle gas-fired power plants has risen to between 50% and 60%, still far lower than nuclear reactors, while wind and solar is around an average of 30% and 25%, respectively.

    Many of the nation’s tech giants, such as Amazon, Google and Oracle, are contracting to support development of SMR nuclear, but no plants are under construction and the first next-generation reactor may not be operational until the mid-2030s. In the meantime, U.S. data center capacity is expected to grow by 50 GW or more during the same period.

    “We are excited to partner with Constellation and the Clinton community to ensure the long-term operations of the nuclear plant, add new capacity, and help preserve over 1,000 jobs. Securing clean, reliable energy is necessary to continue advancing our AI ambitions,” said Urvi Parekh, Head of Global Energy at Meta. “We are proud to help keep the Clinton plant operating for years to come and demonstrate that this plant is an important piece to strengthening American leadership in energy.”

    The U.S. fleet of more than 90 nuclear units, including Clinton, currently account for 18% of total utility-scale power generation nationally, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Nuclear also accounts for more than half of total carbon-free electricity generated.

    An analysis by research firm The Brattle Group indicated that closing Clinton would raise greenhouse gas emissions by 34 million metric tons of carbon over the next 20 years. The study also looked at the impact of closing the Dresden nuclear station in Illinois and found that closing both it and Clinton would increase emissions more than 3.8 million metric tons per year.

    Data center hyperscalers are not the only commercial and industrial firms seeking carbon-free nuclear power to fuel operations. Chemical giant Dow is seeking federal construction approval to build a planned X-energy SMR nuclear microgrid to energize its Seadrift manufacturing operations in south Texas. 

     

    About the Author

    Rod Walton, EnergyTech Managing Editor | Managing Editor

    For EnergyTech editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

    Rod Walton has spent 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. He formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    Walton earned his Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. His career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

    He was named Managing Editor for Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech starting July 1, 2023

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

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